Friday, May 22, 2015

RE: Gender Diversity & Health

I am still waiting for a response to my last communication with you regarding the inadequate provisions of STI testing services in the province. While I anxiously await your action on that critical file, I raise another concern that has been brought to my attention. I have learned that New Brunswick Transgender Health Network is soon scheduled to have an in-person meeting with you, and I wish to add my voice to this conversation. I hope that you heed my recommendations as a New Brunswicker with a Master of Arts in Gender Studies who openly identifies as non-binary.

I have studied and argued public intersections with gender, sex, and sexuality extensively in personal and academic contexts. Through rigorous research and reflection, I have accepted that Canadian provincial governments do not have a legal duty to fund sex-reassignment surgeries (SRS). Arguments to the contrary conflate sex (a physiological designation) and gender (a social identity/expression) and invoke a trans-essentialist logic that asserts that there are only men and women, and citizens have the right to be either, regardless of the bodies they were born into. This logic is reductive and problematic; it erases the possibility of non-binary and indigenous gender identities and subjects healthy intersex babies to unnecessary and risky surgeries.

(Map of indigenous gender diversity around the world)

Canadian human rights laws infer the right to gender self-determination by prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of gender identity and gender expression, but this inference does not prescribe that SRS provision become a mandatory component of Canadian public healthcare. Rather, these protections articulate the legal administration of two acceptable gendered existences is an injustice.

Gender justice is much more complicated than the incorporation of SRS into our public health provisions. Gender confirming healthcare should be offered to all citizens, administered as non-interference and support of gender self-determination throughout health services and administration. Gender can be administered as religion is. Religion is a personal decision; you may choose one or more or none. You can can change your Religion at any point, needing no permission from the state, and data on religion is collected via fill-in-the-blank, not a check box.

The province is not bound by duty to provide SRS funding, but your administration should be compelled to act by morality. The financial inaccessibility of SRS creates too many negative mental health implications for a responsible government do nothing. I reiterate that it is the duty of your administration to facilitate the right to gender self-determination across departments and create a social reality that makes experiences of gender non-conformity legitimate, rather than heretical.

I am asking for three concrete actions from your administration to enact gender justice. First, I propose that your administration to create a public fund available to low-income New Brunswickers diagnosed with gender dysphoria for the purpose of funding SRS procedures and medications. Second, I demand a provincial law banning 'gender corrective' surgery on intersex babies. Last, I implore the initiation of sweeping policy review across departments to examine administrative and linguistic barriers to gender self-determination.

New Brunswickers of all genders, sexes, and sexualities deserve equal enjoyment of this beautiful province, and you are in a position to facilitate a meaningful shift toward equality. I hope my recommendations resonate with you and that action is taken quickly.